SPACESHIP AWAY for Spring

The classic version of Dan Dare is kept alive again in brand new installments in the latest edition of Spaceship Away that has just arrived. Issue 38 (or Part 38 as it's called) is another 40 page package with superb reproduction on quality paper. 

The contents include the latest episodes of Tim Booth's ongoing Dan Dare serials, Mercury Revenant and Parsecular Tales across eight pages. Booth puts a lot of work into his pages and they look fantastic. My only gripe, again, is that there's no resumé captions to remind us of the story so far. With four months between each issue it's a long time to expect readers to remember what's gone on. I appreciate that Tim might not want such captions cluttering up the pages but a small paragraph or two on page 2, next to the editorial, would be very useful. 

All-new art and story by Tim Booth.

Other strips this issue feature the conclusion of the Jet Morgan reprint The World Next Door (which does include a Story So Far caption) and Part Four of the Nick Hazard story Planet of Doom by Phil Harbottle and Ron Turner, nicely coloured by Martin Baines. 

Vintage Ron Turner artwork.

There are some great articles in this issue too, with the conclusion of Andrew Darlington's retrospective of Dan Dare in the New Eagle covering 1989 to 1994. There's also a good lengthy eight page feature on Keith Watson's distinguished career, and a well illustrated article on Authentic Science Fiction magazine showing some excellent 1950s covers. 

One of the superb 1950s covers shown in the issue.

To top it off there's a new cutaway illustration by Graham Bleathman of Gogol's Personal Phant Transport printed across the centrespread. It's always good to see new work by Graham and this is another intricate job. 

Spaceship Away No.38, 40 pages in full colour, £8.50. Copies will be available soon from the official website:
http://spaceshipaway.org.uk/

Fanzine cover collection

Comics fanzines are pretty much a thing of the past now, replaced by websites and blogs like this. That's fine for news, comment, and articles, but you can't beat a good fanzine cover. And the 1970s and early 1980s had some crackers. Many of us started out in fanzines and some pros were still happy to contribute the occasional cover when asked. Above is the cover to Fantasy Advertiser International No.55, April 1975. The images surrounding Stan Lee's grinning mug shot are by Bryan Talbot in his early days. 

Let's take a look at several more. Today, Graham Bleathman is renowned for his fantastic cutaway paintings of Gerry Anderson vehicles and suchlike, but back in 1978 he was making his debut with his self-published fanzine Magazine of Tomorrow. Graham's art improved rapidly in subsequent issues...

Comic Media News was edited by Richard Burton who'd later go on to be an editor at IPC/Fleetway/Egmont on comics from Tiger and 2000AD to Sonic the Comic. This cover to issue 29 (Jan-Feb 1977) is by Brian Bolland...

Comic Media News No.33 (Nov-Dec 1977) with a nice 'jam' cover by Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, and Mick McMahon...

Comic Media News No.34 (Jan-Feb 1978) with a wraparound cover by Mike Higgs...

Comic Media News No.38 (Oct-Nov 1978) with art by Garry Leach...

BEM (formerly Bemusing Magazine) was published my Martin Lock who later set up Harrier Comics. This cover to No.22 (January 1979) is by the ever-brilliant Hunt Emerson...

BEM No.23 (April 1979) cover by Brian Bolland...

BEM no.25 (September 1979) cover by Bryan Talbot...

BEM No.27 (March 1980) cover by Dave Gibbons showing a very 1970s Dez Skinn...

BEM No.28 (May 1980) another cover by Brian Bolland...

BEM No.29 (August 1980) cover by Mick McMahon...

BEM No.35 (Spring 1982) cover by Kevin O'Neill...

Masters of Infinity was a smart fanzine published my Mike Taylor. The cover to No.7 (1980) was by Mick McMahon...

Workin Klass Super Hero was an A4 stripzine published by Jolly Martian Productions. This is issue 1 from 1979. Its cover (and some content) was by Glenn Fabry...

Fusion was an A5 fanzine edited by Hugh Campbell. The cover to No.6 (June 1985) was drawn by Grant Morrison, better known today for his writing of course...

Last but not least, we'll end as we began with a Bryan Talbot cover. This one for Short Fuse No.2 (1985) published by Graham Cousins, Paul Duncan and John Jackson.

I hope these covers have been of interest. I'll post more info about these old fanzines at a later date if enough of you are interested. For example, over on my other blog I've posted the first article I had published from 1979. You can see it here:
http://lewstringercomics.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-folly-of-youth-my-first-fanzine.html

Blimey! blog is taking a break for a few days now, unless important news comes along, as I have a lot of work on this week. Please keep posting your comments though as I'll still be taking a few minutes to reply to those. 

Thunderbirds in the comics

Unless you've been living on Mars (with those pesky Rock Snakes) you probably know there's a brand new Thunderbirds series coming to TV this Spring, entitled Thunderbirds Are Go. A mixture of CGI and models it promises to put a new spin on the old favourites but remaining true to the basics. 

What you may also know is that last October it was announced that DC Thomson will be publishing a monthly Thunderbirds Are Go magazine this year, plus an annual. Thomsons are being very hush-hush about it so there's no news on contents or publication date as yet but I'll post info as soon as I get the go ahead. (Although you'll probably hear of it elsewhere first.)

This isn't the first time there's been a Thunderbirds magazine of course. The series has a long association with comics, dating back to TV Century 21 No.52 in early 1966 (cover above) which featured the first Thunderbirds comic strip illustrated by the great Frank Bellamy...

The Thunderbirds strip replaced the Lady Penelope strip (which had been running in TV21 since issue 1 in January 1965). However this heralded a promotion, with Lady Penelope gaining her own weekly publication. 

Thunderbirds became a major part of TV21 but never had its own ongoing comic at that time, although in 1966 there was the Thunderbirds Extra, a 48 page glossy one-off which effectively was the first Thunderbirds solo comic...

The special featured several long complete Thunderbirds strips by a variety of top 1960s artists including Brian Lewis...

Don Harley...

...and Ron Turner...

There were other Thunderbirds specials and annuals of course, but I'm mainly focusing on the regular comics for this post. 

TV21's Thunderbirds strip ended in 1970. A year later, Polystyle gained the licence to publish strips based on Gerry Anderson shows and launched Countdown (see blog post here)...

A brand new Thunderbirds strip began in Countdown No.1, illustrated by Don Harley...

Countdown became TV Action in 1972 and its falling fortunes led to some reprint in its pages including Frank Bellamy Thunderbirds strips from TV21. TV Action later dropped the Thunderbirds strips before the comic ended in 1973 but nine years later in 1982 Polystyle published the Thunderbirds Special. This 48 page comic was all-reprint, gathering strips from various annuals and specials.

Presumably it sold well enough for Polystyle to publish two more Thunderbirds Specials in 1983 and 1984. Again, all reprint.

A few years later, in 1988, Action 21 was launched, published by David Nightingale of Engale Marketing in Blackpool (based at Lytham Road's excellent Thunderbooks comic shop). Superbly designed by Graham Bleathman, Action 21 was a 20 page A4 comic on quality paper, containing sharply reproduced reprints of TV21 strips including Bellamy's Thunderbirds. Sadly the limited distribution comic didn't last too long but it was a worthy exercise. (Back issues are still available from the publisher. Click here to see.)

In 1991, with Thunderbirds enjoying a revived surge of popularity for a new generation (due to repeats on TV), Fleetway launched Thunderbirds the Comic, a 24 page fortnightly edited by Alan Fennell who had been the original editor of TV21, as well as a writer on the TV series.

For its first three issues Thunderbirds the Comic only contained reprints of TV21 strips (plus great new cutaways by Graham Bleathman) but from issue 4 it began to include new material in the form of strip adaptations of TV episodes featuring fantastic artwork by people such as Steve Kyte and Keith Watson...

Thunderbirds the Comic was initially a massive success for Fleetway and ran for 89 issues, concluding in March 1995. Convinced there was still potential in the comic, Alan Fennell gained the licence to publish it himself as Thunderbirds Are Go! 

For a few issues it was cheaper than its predecessor but Thunderbirds Are Go! didn't survive for long. (I think it lasted 8 issues.) Its contents were once again TV21 reprints plus photo-strips using screen grabs from the TV series. (Unfortunately the quality of the photos wasn't too good in issue one, with some looking like they'd simply been photographed from the TV screen.)

In 1999 Redan launched their own Thunderbirds monthly magazine, with a slick design in tune with other Thunderbirds merchandise of the time.

The direction of Redan's Thunderbirds mag was distinctly younger than previous publications featuring the property. Its emphasis was on simply told photo-stories and activity pages (and new cutaways by Graham Bleathman)...

Undoubtedly this was a disappointment for older fans but it proved to be the right decision by Redan as the publication ran for several years. 

So... what will DC Thomson's new Thunderbirds Are Go magazine be like when it arrives on our shelves? The last 49 years of Thunderbirds comics (and indeed British comics in general) have shown a gradual simplification in tone. TV21 was very sophisticated compared to today's comics, but that didn't deter readers back in 1965. (I was five years old when TV21 No.1 was published. Loved it!) 

The old attitude in publishing used to be that if your comic was aimed at 5 to 11 year olds, you'd write it for the older end of the target audience and the younger ones would catch up (and feel 'big' that they were reading something that wasn't 'babyish') - because children will drop a comic like a stone if they think it's infantile. Publishers could take risks like that when sales were half a million or so. Today it's a different scene, with many children struggling with their reading, a culture with more emphasis on visuals, and publishers not wanting to risk alienating the ones who do pick up their mags. It's possible that Thunderbirds Are Go will follow the direction of Doctor Who Adventures and suchlike and have a focus on 'activity pages' and pull-out posters - and inevitably be bagged with gifts. We'll know soon enough. The good thing is that once again there'll be a Thunderbirds magazine in newsagents (hopefully with some comic strip). 

For a more detailed history of Thunderbirds comic strips see the excellently researched Technodelic website:
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload01/Thunderbirds01.htm

UPDATE: I've just received this first image of the new character designs for the new series. What do you think, folks?

Review: Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson

I've known the artist Graham Bleathman since the late 1970s, when we were both doing our individual fanzines. Mine was After Image, and his was The Magazine of Tomorrow. Over the years we've focused on our particular careers, mine in humour comics, and Graham excelling at the art of the cutaway for various publications as well as illustrating numerous covers for The People's Friend. 

Back in the 1990s, Graham provided many double page cutaway paintings for Fleetway's Thunderbirds the Comic, and now Egmont have gathered them into a spectacular hardback collection, Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson.

Fortunately Graham still had a lot of the artwork, so the book could be shot from his original boards and the reproduction is excellent. The 128 pages cover the vehicles and locations seen from Fireball XL5 to Joe 90, including superb cutaways of all the Thunderbirds craft, Tracy Island, Cloudbase, Marineville Control Tower, and many more.

The cutaways proved so popular that they went beyond what we saw on TV, and included places and vehicles only seen in the TV21 comic strips, such as Katannia, Capital of Bereznik, the Eastern Block country used as the villains in the strips. We also get to see the inside of a Bereznik Battle Tank! 

Graham based his cutaways on what we know from the TV shows, but of course the level of detail meant that he also had to go further than that, creating mechanics and interiors never seen in the shows or comics. It's all good fun, and the fantastic artwork is worth poring over for hours. 

Inside the Worlds of Gerry Anderson is published by Egmont on November 6th 2014 as part of their Classic Comics range. R.R.P. £17.99. ISBN 978-1-4052-7265-0

A related book, The Gerry Anderson Comic Collection, is also available, which I've reviewed here:
http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-gerry-anderson-comic-collection.html